Wife pushes for help in finding Oak Park killer

When the police arrived, Mary Mapes was sitting with her daughter, Rita, on the red wooden steps at the front of their house, waiting as they did many afternoons for Peter D'Agostino to return home.

The officer told Mapes that D'Agostino, her husband and Rita's dad, was receiving medical attention.

When she got to Loyola Medical Center, she learned the rest: D'Agostino, a well-liked associate professor of history at University of Illinois at Chicago and an acclaimed author, had been beaten to death.

Now, a little more than three weeks later, she recalls how that morning had been like so many other mornings in their Oak Park home, with Peter standing at the dining room table before leaving for work. He was a man, she says, who played violin to get his daughter to take afternoon naps, sang his wife's name, joked about having so many in-laws that he needed a "Mapes menu," an exceptional man who relished his ordinary happiness.

"We just had a real simple, ordinary life," Mapes said, pausing. She was seated Friday at her dining room table, head bowed, fingertips pressed together. "We really didn't have a lot of ambition beyond what we had right here. We were really happy with what we had right here."

Mapes, 38, always has been a private person, friends and family say. A history teacher at Lake Forest College and author, she described her life as shattered.

But she is stepping forward publicly, painful as it is, for one reason: She believes that keeping the story of Peter D'Agostino's slaying in the public eye will jog the conscience or memory of someone who will help solve the crime.

"The police can't solve it without the public," Mapes said. "It's really important for me and for Rita and, most important, for Peter. We need people to be there for him now. I want justice for Peter."

D'Agostino, 42, had spent the morning of June 22 teaching American history at UIC, then attended a colleague's lecture in the Loop until early afternoon before returning to campus with a colleague about 2:30 p.m., family and colleagues said. That was the last reported sighting of D'Agostino alive.

His routine was to take the CTA Blue Line train to Oak Park in the afternoon and walk the few blocks home. He was found severely beaten about 5:30 p.m. June 22, in a front yard less than three blocks from his home.

Police released a computer-generated composite drawing of a "person of interest," an African-American man in his mid-20s to mid-30s who stands 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet 2 inches tall, with a slight to medium build. He reportedly was driving a mid-size, turquoise or light-blue car with a maroon or dark-colored front passenger side fender.

Four people--including a Berwyn man who was chased on his way home from work about 45 minutes before D'Agostino's killing--reported seeing a man resembling the "person of interest" on the afternoon of the slaying.

"What the police are doing right now is focusing on the tips they've been given," Oak Park village spokesman David Powers said Friday. Police have received about 175 calls with information about the crime, he added.

Investigators also are reviewing evidence with the Illinois State Police crime lab, Powers said.

Mapes said police "have been in regular contact" with her but she is more hopeful that an anonymous tip line and $1,000 reward from Cook County CrimeStoppers for information that yields an arrest will convince someone to come forward. The CrimeStoppers phone number is 800-535-STOP.

Mapes said she is unable to think about her future.

"We just assumed it would be there," she said and then paused. "We never questioned it."

Mapes and D'Agostino met on a blind date arranged by a mutual friend on Sept. 30, 2001. D'Agostino had returned to live in Chicago, where he had received his master's degree and doctorate at the University of Chicago before leaving for a teaching job at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass.

They went to dinner at La Bocca della Verita Italian restaurant on the North Side and walked along the lakefront. Mapes recalled, "I just fell head over heels. He made me laugh. He made me feel safe and secure and he was just full of life."

A high school cross-country star and violinist who also played the mandolin, D'Agostino was born in Queens, N.Y., the youngest of five children, and raised on Long Island. He graduated from Brown University.

They were engaged six months after their first date, married Sept. 7, 2002, in Evanston's Howe Chapel and honeymooned in Rome, where D'Agostino had lived and worked.

"He took me to all the places he loved to visit," Mapes recalled. "Peter loved to take walks, especially at night."

In May 2004, Rita Grace D'Agostino was born. The two college teachers staggered their schedules so one of them could be home with Rita.

Despite his musical training, D'Agostino would play only in the home, before Rita napped or while she bounced in a seat on a cord in a doorway. He'd also play for his wife.

In the days since D'Agostino was slain, Mapes has gotten letters from across the country, telling her how D'Agostino touched their lives.

When she grows up, Rita may not remember D'Agostino playing music, singing to her or telling her about the people in the photographs in their home. But Rita will be reminded of him when she looks in the mirror.